Arts Preview: Temporary City

Peter Robertson Gallery, runs until Oct. 11

Captivated by buildings in the late stages of their lifecycles, local painter Gordon Harper examines their transformations in Edmonton’s urban landscape. He takes familiar images — a post-war bungalow, for example — and creates works that mirror our own transience.

“Watching something that used to be new retreat into history makes you start to think about your own mortality,” he says. “It’s a good time to reflect on the impermanence of all things.”

He captures the soft glow of landscapes at night through his use of transparent paint and glazing on his preferred medium, oil-on-wood panels.

In “Temporary City,” Harper exhibits a series of paintings that continue his decade-long fascination with older southside neighbourhoods, but there will be more reflection on modernist buildings. He wants to “be descriptive in a way that underscores the form-follows-function ethic of modernism. I associate transparency [of paint] with the ideas of modernism and modernist architecture.”  (12304 Jasper Ave., 780-455-7479, probertsongallery.com)